Atrios Nails It
Atrios wrote this as part of his explanation of why the Very Sensible Centrists are full of shit when they talk about trans kids, but it applies whenever they play their “the right has a point” game. Which means it applies to just about everything.
I’m not interested in playing Whack-a-Mole with every dumb thing that comes from wingnuttia or The Sensible Centrists. That in itself is part of their strategy, just a neverending stream of shit to keep us occupied. Every day a new justification for some horror or bigotry.
No need to treat dumb liars as anything other than, even if the NYT and The Atlantic and New York Magazine pay them lots of money.
He even provides the receipts, dredging up a Jonathan Chait piece from 2003, written to chide liberals for dismissing George W. Bush’s bullshit justifications for the war in Iraq.
Chait lies, and some of his lies are along the lines of, “MY CRITICS ARE NOT ENGAGING WITH THE ARGUMENTS SERIOUSLY,” a neat little debate trick which puts honest people (unlike Chait) on the defensive and encourages them to say, “yes, yes, I am, here’s an example of it,” but by then Chait, laughing, has moved onto the next bit of bullshit. It’s projection, and a little trick that helps obscure the fact that he is the one not engaging honestly. …
It’s just a game to these monsters. Chait cares about trans kids as much as he cared about Iraqis, which is, at best, not at all. “At best” is a generous interpretation given the number of deaths he encouraged.
He continues:
You you might remember these types of arguments. War and “the trans debate” are not really similar issues, but the centrists are going at them in the same style. The anti-war view was mostly excluded from anywhere except blogs then, as the “pro-trans” view is mostly excluded from anywhere except twitter. Still somehow the All Powerful Left (THE TRANS MAFIA) must be combatted and denounced in several hundred frothing opinion pieces.
In both cases “The Left” view was/is never presented as anything but caricature from the mouths of people concern trolling it while claiming that The Left was failing to care about Iraqis/care about children (before the Iraq war became a fake humanitarian mission, The Left failed to come up with their own plan to remove Saddam’s nonexistent weapons). The Left is Unserious and Unreasonable and Unwilling To Engage My Arguments and Blinded By Ideology etc. It’s just how centrists do things. They go on a fart huffing bender and then sanctimoniously address The Lefties of their imaginations.
It was as ridiculous to imagine that Dick Cheney wanted war in Iraq for humanitarian reasons as it is to imagine all the anti-Trans people are motivated by a deep concern for the welfare of children and teens. Yah, Joe Rogan and Andrew Sullivan and Jon Chait and Jesse Singal, these guys just spend all day every day thinking about how to make the lives of children better.
Don’t be a sucker, just laugh and point.
The Gish Gallop was alive and well. It’s successors still are…